


Lovebug

by TundrainAfrica



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Office, F/M, Love Alarm App (Love Alarm), Mutual Pining, Reincarnation, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 04:14:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30015963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TundrainAfrica/pseuds/TundrainAfrica
Summary: "It might be a bug.""A bug?"“Sometimes the developers of this application make mistakes. This is our first time meeting I’m sure so...Isn’t it a bit weird that we just met for the first time and it rings like this? And for two strangers to coincidentally ring each other’s alarms?"Levi is the developer of the Love Alarm App and Hange is married to Zeke.
Relationships: Levi Ackerman/Hange Zoë, Zeke Yeager/Hange Zoë
Comments: 14
Kudos: 78
Collections: Tumblr Prompts and Oneshots (Tundrainafrica)





	Lovebug

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt #1: hello!! i didn't know who to ask for levihan writing request but i thought it would be interesting if there was a levihan x love alarm au. love alarm is an 8-episodes long kdrama where people download an app named love hello!! i didn't know who to ask for levihan writing request but i thought it would be interesting if there was a levihan x love alarm au. love alarm is an 8-episodes long kdrama where people download an app named love alarm and it tells the user if the number of people within a 10-metre radius who's in love with them hehe
> 
> Prompt #2: Levihan Reincarnation AU wherein Levi and Hange got reincarnated in modern world but when they found each other, Hange was already married to someone.
> 
> Prompt #3: What do you think about Levi x Hanji x Zeke? Lol. I got this Idea when I read one fanfic from Ao3 Mimetic desire by Noixdepapaye. You know, they both like Hange but she doen't have any idea, but theyare still on war. Canonnon

Humans have a natural propensity to make life complicated for themselves.

It was when Levi first started learning how to code did that one proposition dawn on him one random monotonous morning as he stared lifelessly at the words ‘Hello World’ at the top of his little screen.

Learning how to code made him reflect on that particular phrase from so many sides at once. Coding was a language, a language filled with numbers, brackets, underscores. And it made him painfully aware of so many things slowly then all at once.

The simplest interfaces were made with the most complex codes. At the same, the simplest symbols were enough to govern the most complex systems.

Yet, if humans never made those simple symbols into a complex language and if humans didn’t create for themselves complicated blueprints to govern supply chains, manage information systems, life would never have been so simple.

The unbreakable relationship, the intricacies that were completely interwoven with each other, between the simple and the complex was what made Levi realize in particular that life was complex. And Information and Technology being man made products, made Levi very much convinced that it was human nature to make life that complicated.

Even if it wasn’t entirely true though, Levi was particularly convinced there were inarguable truths to it.

When he started developing one application in particular, one application that was starting to sell a little too easily, and was starting to make waves much faster than Levi could catch up to it, he had started to hold on to those truths like an indispensable memento.

Every time he heard praises about the application with such a simple interface and with such a simple function, he would allow himself a second or so to ponder those truths, the simple fact that making that simple application had not been so easy.

And hearing praises about that application wasn’t anything new. The visitor in front of him who raised his hand and waved too eagerly in greeting as soon as Levi entered Erwin’s office, was nothing more than routine. Levi expected to forget him soon after the meeting.

“Love Alarm.” Their new visitor read the brochure aloud, a little more air coming from his mouth than actual noise. He flailed one hand up in the air in excitement. “An application that rings when a person within a ten meter radius is in love with you. An ingenious idea, Mr. Smith. Really, you deserve the highest praise for even coming up with such a product.”

Erwin shook his head. “I only manage the operations. I invited Levi Ackerman here so while you’re here, you can at least meet the mastermind behind the actual development work.”

“Pleasure to meet you Mr. Ackerman.”

Levi didn’t even have time to put his hand out in front of him for a quick shake. The visitor did more than enough on his end to express his enthusiasm. He reached out his hand and shook Levi’s hand so forcefully, bombarding him with so much praise that the introvert in Levi was more than ready to clock that one gesture as ‘exceeding’ his social interaction quota for the day.

“Tell me, how did you come up with such an application?”

_Market demand? Potential profit? Erwin suggested it?_ His mind answered preemptively. “It took years.” Only a second after did Levi realize he hadn’t answered the question. But the blonde bespectacled visitor was unperturbed. “It’s all everyone talks about now. If you’ve heard of my family… We own a few of the hospitals around the country and we would benefit a lot from your application. Erwin and I have been talking about this potential partnership over email for a while... Now that I’m back in the country... I’m happy to say it looks like we’ll be signing a contract soon.”

Rambles on sales would fly into his ear and out the other so quickly and the ramble in front of him from the blond visitor was no exception. Levi turned to Erwin for support. _Who is this man?_ He silently asked.

Whether Erwin had understood that question, Levi never did find out. Eventually though, after some more unintelligible conversations on preferred partnerships, contracts, consignments and rollouts, Erwin paused and turned to Levi. “This is Zeke Jaeger, eldest son of Grisha Jaeger, owner of the Jaeger corporation.”

“Jaeger Corporation?” Levi at the least attempted a rising tone as he said those two words, an attempt to express enthusiasm or confusion. In reality, Levi had never heard of that corporation but in such a scenario, with company business on the line, that wasn’t something he was eager to admit.

“ _The_ Jaeger Corporation,” Erwin repeated expectantly. To Levi’s relief though, he didn’t prod for anything else. He went back to his discussion with Zeke and Levi had enough of an opening at least to do a quick google search on his phone.

_Jaeger Corporation._ They were prominent enough to be at the first page of google search. And soon after he found them, Levi understood why. They were one of the largest medical service providers in the country.

_We own a few hospitals around the country._ Those words echoed in his head as he scrolled through the google entries and by the second page Levi was convinced that there was a lie to that comment. _Few hospitals?_ Levi couldn’t even count the number of location markers in the map having done a quick location search on his phone.

“Could you give Mr. Jaeger here a quick demo of our product?” Erwin requested.

_It’s available on the playstore._ Levi would have wanted to say. He was sure the interface was easy enough for anyone to get in one go. Erwin always insisted with more important clients that Levi demoed the application in front of them. Eventually demos did part of a routine during partnership meetings, an tacky addition Levi never personally agreed with.

“It would be an honor to see it opened by the main developer himself,” Zeke opened his hands wide in welcome, as if gesturing for Levi to place his phone on the table.

Not wasting any more time, Levi closed his browser application and placed his phone on the table. He kept the application saved in an empty folder on his phone. It served at least some aesthetic purpose, making the familiar heart icon the focus on an otherwise blank screen. And the transition from home screen to the application screen when pressed on was designed to be quick and seamless for the investors with too little time to spare, to be memorable and pleasing to the eyes for the user with too little money to spare.

Levi had deleted his biodata beforehand in preparation for the meeting and as expected, the application switched to a sign up screen.

“When I make an account, I register my biometrics over here,” Levi clicked ‘new sign up’ and pressed his thumb on the thumb print symbol. Once, then twice, then a few more times. “It’s normal for the application to ask for multiple readings. It then asks for a face ID. then you input your weight, and height.”

“Interesting,” Zeke said a little too loudly.

Levi looked up to see him scratching his chin, his eyes wide with what looked to be excitement. He looked too excited, Levi's first instinct was to doubt it. Or maybe he was just a little too used to the application.

"So Mr. Ackerman… Or may I call you Levi?" Zeke didn't wait for Levi to answer. "How does this application work?"

"The data collected from your phone like your biometrics, your location are constantly communicated to the main server. The main server sends the command to your phone to alarm when someone within 10 meters is in love with you," Levi said almost mechanically. An answer understandable to a layman had been something Levi had rehearsed one to many times.

“By biometrics you mean? "

"We collect their biometrics. This application collects the users data over time, average temperature, routine movements like the rhythm of their stride and their cadence and we use these biological signs to determine if someone is in love."

_Biological signs._ Levi wasn't a scientist and thus, had kept that last part a little vague.

Zeke paused for a second as if deep in thought before giving a nod of approval. "Seems promising. So you would say the first time it alarms, it wouldn't be accurate."

"There are standard signs for attraction, so i wouldn't say it will be completely inaccurate." Levi said. “But the accuracy and precision should get better overtime as the application collects more data on the user.”

Zeke nodded once again. He dropped his shoulders and leaned back on the sofa. Levi only noticed then that Zeke had possibly been tense or nervous leading up to the moment. It was a passing thought though that Levi quickly brushed off.

Zeke spoke up again, his tone a little calmer. “Let me challenge your brain a little bit more Levi. How would you determine that people are in love? Or... how did you teach the application to do that?”

“Data,” Levi said.

Zeke raised one eyebrow. “Do you think data is enough to identify something as complex as love?”

“We’ve been working on this application for at least five yea---”

“I’m not asking about development, I’m asking about the data and the accuracy.”

Levi was starting to notice then the arrogance of the man in front of him. He was certain then, Zeke was completely aware of his own empire, his own power in the market and his overall power over both him and Erwin.

Levi cleared his throat. “If you would have let me finish…. We have been working on this application for five years, and in that time we’ve been dealing with hundreds of millions worth of data points. There will be outliers Mr. Jaeger, but the trends do exist. And these trends in the data are what help us determine who is or isn’t in love,” he explained.

“Love is a very complicated thing. I’m sure you’ve been in love before Levi you would know.”

Levi paused, his brain scrambling for a reply to something he had never rehearsed before. Product demos rarely shifted to conversations on love lives. And that was something Levi was completely unprepared to answer, even if he knew the answer to it so well.

Ironically, although he was the mastermind behind the application which was slated to be the ‘future of dating’ (according to the marketing team at least), Levi had never been in a relationship.

And at first, that had sounded like an impediment, something that Levi suspected would have been the wrong thing to admit in that situation. Before he could even react to such a personal comment, his mind had shifted to another way of thinking.

Maybe he was the best person to have been making such an application in the first place. When people think of love, they think emotions, they think experiences, they think problems and traumas. The only experiences Levi ever had of romantic love and attraction were whatever data he fed into his systems from every trial, watching as the computer got more and more in tune to the most identifying characteristics of love.

“I don’t agree. I think love is a very simple concept Mr. Jaeger. Humans are just constantly out to make life more complicated for themselves,” Levi answered. And that memento that Levi had kept so close to himself made its entrance and with it came a rush of confidence.

Love was in fact a very simple thing for Levi. Over the years, as he accumulated data set after data set, loading them into servers, Levi did do his own research. That research had been the reason Levi had managed to so nonchalantly reduce such a complex yet seemingly all-powerful emotion to numbers, datasets, graphs and trendlines.

It left Levi with one conclusion.

Love is just a glorified emotion. Emotions are just glorified biology. Biology is just glorified chemistry. Chemistry is just glorified physics. Physics is just glorified math.

So by extension, by some transitive property, love can be broken down to numbers. To numbers, to data. And numbers and codes are all anyone needs to get a computer working. And data is all one needs to get a computer learning and improving.

In conclusion, if broken down to its smallest bits, love was just numbers

“Yet, somehow, people always complicate love.” Levi muttered that last part to himself. He had enough experience at least to know that not many people would be happy to hear what makes them human could be reduced to something so seemingly mundane as numbers.

“Hmmm. If love really is a simple thing then, let’s try this application out. I would like to test this application in front of you if you would allow me too. Maybe you could give me some feedback, tell me if I’m using it wrong?”

“If you want it to alarm, we might need to find someone who is in love with you. Or if you’re willing, we can go out to the nearby mall and---”

“I’m a busy man, Levi. I don’t have time for malls. Besides, Erwin and I have many other things to discuss about this partnership before my four o’clock appointment.” Zeke said. He glanced at his watch and looked back up again. He had an air to him then as he crossed his legs that said, maybe he was too busy and too important to be testing an application in a public commoner space such as a mall.

“We could have one of our employees and their significant other come in and have them try the app so you can see how it works,” Erwin suggested. “If Marie were here, I would have been happy to show you how the alarm sounds like.”

Zeke shook his head. “No need for that. I already have a plan in mind. It looks like I only have an hour or so left before my next appointment but we still have so much to talk about Erwin.” Zeke turned to Levi, a grin on his face that Levi read a little too well.

“Would you be a dear and pick up my partner for me?”

“Partner?” Levi asked.

“Partner. Wife. Significant Other. I’m married, Levi. Is that surprising?” Zeke asked. His tone was light but Levi still struggled to tell whether it was a joke or whether Zeke was offended at anything Levi may have said.

“No, it’s not,” Levi said. Maybe he had sugarcoated that part a bit. “But, where should I pick up your partner… or er.. Your wife?”

“She’s been walking around the gardens of your company grounds for a while. Trying to get your application to alarm,” Zeke pulled out his phone from his pocket and showed the screen to Levi. On the lock screen was a picture of Zeke and next to him was a bespectacled brunette next to him.

Glancing quickly at Zeke then back at the Zeke on the screen, Levi surmised that the picture couldn’t have been taken more than a few months ago.

“She’s a little...eccentric so I honestly don’t think you’ll have too much of a problem finding her.” Zeke said. “That fruitcake of mine has been playing with your app since I told her about this new partnership deal. Understandable though since she is a neuropsychologist,” he shrugged.

“So do you have any clue where I can find her?” Levi asked. The company grounds was a good distance away from the city center and Levi estimated it was at eat least a few hectares wide.

“Anyway, she should be around the grounds since I told her to stay around the vicinity. Or… she might have wandered off to the market…” Zeke answered. His answer though hadn’t been very helpful.

“Would you like her number?” Zeke added a few seconds later as if the moment of silence was enough for him to realize how much of a tall order searching for his partner would be.

“Yes, that would be helpful,” Levi said, still wondering what face he had made for Zeke to have gained some consideration for others in that span of a few seconds.

Levi was forgotten as soon as the number and picture were sent to his phone. The conversation shifted to partnership deals, plans and proposals on application developments. Those weren’t his problems anymore though and like always, fading out of such a conversation was smooth sailing.

It could have been relief or it could have been his own brand of subdued excitement at being able to leave such a stiff meeting. Regardless, Levi found himself raring to leave the room and he had slipped out a little too seamlessly and a little too quickly.

No one did look back though. As Levi walked away from the door, he could have sworn the rhythm of the soft voices on the other side of it, never broke.

* * *

There was a dial tone. That meant she was receiving the call.

His first instinct had been to suspect that either she was ignoring his calls or she had put her phone on silent. Levi though had another suspicion. Zeke had mentioned earlier that she had been playing with the application since that morning.

And having been familiar with the in and outs of the application, he was familiar with a few bugs here and there.

"Right… there is a bug about that." Levi muttered to himself.

Their support team had reported such a bug recently but it had been pushed back as a third priority since it had been deemed an improvement more than a functional issue.

At that moment, Levi was starting to realize maybe he should have put that up on a priority list.

As long as the application is on, and the user is on the screen, then the user will not be able to receive notifications. _Or see calls._ In the end, Levi blamed his own act of omission and consequently his own incompetence and laziness for the chain of inconveniences he faced then. He huffed. "Can't be helped."

For once, he had to go about things the old fashioned way.

Trees lined the perimeter of the company grounds yet the company grounds were decorated with paths that led to each building, grass and small bushes in between. Nothing too overwhelming, he had worked with the company for years and had seen the development and thus, didn't bat too much of an eyelash on something so routine.

The landscape was far from flat though and Levi knew he'd have to skirt the parameter to have any chance of finding the brunette in the picture on his phone.

As he made his way towards the border, Levi reopened the photo sent by Zeke and zoomed in on his partner next to him in the photo.

_Eccentric._ That was the word Zeke had used. And matching such an adjective to the brunette in the picture wasn't too much of a struggle.

Her smile in the photo wasn't too conventional, as if she had made little to no effort to look good in something that would be permanent. She tightened her face into some sort of a combination between a sour look and a smile, and Levi wondered if he would be able to find her just by her glasses and her brown hair.

Glasses and brown hair were fairly common traits and somehow he feared that he could possibly end up bringing another confused brunette back with him to the office and risk pissing off their very important potential business partner Zeke.

Just in case, Levi did do some extra research.

_Partner, Zeke Jaeger._ Three keywords that had him scrolling through more photos under the Google images tab.

The person next to him, the brunette with the mousy hair and glasses actually was admittedly attractive, particularly in the photos taken by the press.

Levi stopped in one photo in particular.

_Jaeger corporation opens up first fully equipped hospital in city outskirts._

In the photo under the headline, Zeke’s partner wore a business suit, a more subtle smile plastered on her face. Levi had to admit though, she looked much cuter with that goofy expression she had in the photo Zeke sent him.

Through some further reading and deduction, Levi did eventually figure out her name. Hange Zoe.

_Not Hange Jaeger?_ Levi thought to himself. He remembered that there were people who chose not to take the name of their husbands. _I wonder why._

There were a lot of things to wonder about the brunette with the mousy brown hair. There were more than enough photos of her next to Zeke, photos of her with the Jaeger family and in many of them, she was attractive.

Not conventionally attractive at least. Levi couldn’t imagine her modeling but he could imagine her being in the front of some magazine similar to Time’s most influential people. She had that aura to her at least which drew people in. Levi started to understand how she could have caught the eye of some high end business mogul like Zeke.

Zeke may be a high end business mogul, but of course he would go for someone with a powerful aura and Levi did gain at least a little more respect for that arrogant bastard who could have gotten any other model as his wife but had chosen to go for someone even Levi was seemingly invested in.

And for a second, Levi did admire Zeke for being able to score someone like that.

Admiration though… Or was it _envy_?

His mind had strayed a little too far, only supported by the silence around him and the smooth cadence of his strides and any disturbance could easily pull him back to reality.

“Waaaaah!” The disturbance came as a scream, too loud and too excited of a scream. And when Levi looked straight ahead, he was almost surprised to see that the one screaming was a good few meters ahead. She was staring straight ahead at the flowery bushes clustered around them and at the center of it all was a heart shaped fountain.

_Ah. That one._ It was a marketing scheme, a recently renovated garden near the center of the company grounds. From above, the red and pink flowers that stood out on the green of the bushes and the grass, formed the iconic symbol of the love alarm app. And the fountain in the middle was located at the center of the heart.

Levi never bothered to find the best angle to look at it. The pictures he saw on the brochures were more than enough reference to it.

But the person in front of him stood on a bench, keeping her chin high as if that was enough to get some inkling of that view from a higher place. It probably was. Levi wouldn’t know though, having been vertically challenged for enough of his life.

Like always, his amazement and amusement at such a view lasted a mere split second and Levi was about to turn away and go back to his mission to search for the partner of Zeke Jaeger when she screamed again.

“This is so cool!” She chimed with such a sing-songy and overly ecstatic voice. If there were anyone else around them, she would have easily drawn anybody else’s attention towards her. But she was the only person there from miles around or at least, from what Levi could see.

And Levi found himself taking stock of the landscape around him. It was the middle of the afternoon on a weekday, everybody else would be in the office working. Everybody else around town who would take time to visit the company grounds were probably at their own workplaces or at schools.

When he looked back at her, wondering how someone would be alone in such a place, Levi did start to notice the resemblance in the messy brown hair in the photo on his phone and the messy brown hair in front of him.

It was brown hair, a majority of the world had brown hair. And then, in front of him, her back to the garden, she had her hair tied up in a half ponytail, not too much of a difference from the messy ponytail in the photo. Enough though at least for Levi to doubt the back profile in front of him.

He approached her, keeping his pace steady.

Or maybe he had slowed down a bit. Levi only noticed such when his heart started to beat a little wilder as if preparing for that moment when she would turn to look back at him. At that moment, it felt like a climax he would have wanted to prolong for himself.

Yet, with Zeke and Erwin’s meeting ending soon, he knew he was working with borrowed time.

“Hey four eyes!” Those words came out of his mouth a little too harshly, as if trying to break past that desire to prolong the moment.

“Excuse me?” She answered, loud enough for Levi to hear. Levi could tell at least by her tone that reply wasn’t at all hostile.

In fact, when she looked back at him, her eyes were wide with surprise and a hint of curiosity. And Levi started to notice that soon after as he walked closer towards her. One step at a time.

“Are you Zeke’s---” Before Levi could even breath out the words, say them loud enough to cover the few meters between them, something else had broken the silence, making an abrupt noise loud enough to cover that distance.

_The love alarm?_

In a hurry to leave the room then, he had forgotten to turn it off. But it never had been something he would be careful with. He was either faced in situations where the streets were too crowded or too empty to have made any difference.

He either got too many rings or none at all. Faced in a situation, with one person though and two loud rings from two different devices, filling the distance between them, there was only one answer for it.

“Is that the sound of the love alarm?” She asked as she jumped down from the bench and approached him. Even before she had started to approach him, Levi was starting to see she resembled more and more the person in the photo next to Zeke.

And as much as Levi had wanted to lie or deny that familiar ring, he couldn’t.

The commercials were everywhere. Anyone who wasn’t living under a rock would know the familiar tone. He pulled out his phone and quickly put it on silent mode. “Yes, sorry about that, I think it rang on its own,” Levi said, he used the rest of that short few seconds as she approached him, to look around him at the bushes, the path that went downhill and anything that could have possibly resembled a person within a ten meter distance.

One ring meant one person was attracted to him.

But if she was the only one within a ten meter distance that meant...Zeke’s partner? Attracted to him? But this was his first time meeting her right? And for sure she would have been much more high profile than him.

At that moment, he started to wonder if his own quick estimation of ten meters was correct.

“Sorry about this false alarm,” she said, still looking a little shaken at the awkward turn of events. Somehow, she seemed more accepting of the fact that she was the only one in his ten meter wide bubble.

“False alarm?” Levi asked. He was certain that the term ‘false alarm’ wasn’t a term commonly used in his application.

“I left it on because I just wanted to try it out but... I’m actually married.”

“It might be a bug,” Levi said.

“A bug?” Hange repeated, her brows furrowed in confusion.

“Sometimes the developers of this app domake mistakes. This is our first time meeting I’m sure so...” Levi said. Hange seemed like a high profile person given her relation to Zeke but Levi was sure she had never met her in his life. “Isn’t it a bit weird that we just met for the first time and it rings like this?” _And for two strangers to so coincidentally ring each other’s alarms?_ Levi added to himself.

Hange paused and for a second, looked to be deep in though. “Yeah, you’re right… Still, sorry for any trouble that could have caused you.” She put her hand out in greeting. “Hange Zoe.”

“So you’re the one… married to Zeke Jaeger?”

“Did he ask you to look for me?” Hange asked.

Levi nodded.

“Now that I think about it, he has a meeting at four…” She muttered mostly to herself. Yet it was still loud enough for Levi to hear.

“I’ll take you to the office,” Levi said as he gestured for her to walk ahead of him. It turned out, he didn’t have to give any directions, Hange knew her way through the company grounds and Levi surmised she had probably been with him when Zeke first entered the office that early afternoon.

She was walking ahead at least and that gave Levi some freedom of movement from behind her. He reopened his application and put the alarm on silent mode.

The walk back to the office was short but it still provided enough time for Levi to turn the application on a few more times, test if that moment a while ago had been the result of a blip in their system that had caused such an awkward scenario between them.

**One person nearby is in love with you**

Despite Levi’s desperate attempts to restart the application as many times as he could, the message remained resilient. After a few more tries, Levi started to prefer the word ‘tenacious’ to describe such a message. It was tenacious... like a cockroach.

And the incessant ringing coming from a nearby Hange’s phone was not helping at all.

“Hange. Can you turn off the ringing?”

“What?” Hange seemed a little too talented at ignoring something so incessant and annoying. And Levi was starting to understand what Zeke had meant by his partner being a little to ‘eccentric. “Oh you mean this?” Hange continued before Levi could even answer his question. “Yeah, you’re right it is annoying. It stopped a few times so I thought it would stop all together eventually.”

“The love alarm doesn’t work like that,” Levi said. He didn't want to admit the reason for that had been him restarting his application a little too many times.

Hange paused at the entrance before entering the main building, her eyes fixed on the screen of her phone. ‘One person in love with you… How accurate do you think this is?”

“It makes some mistakes… But the developers are constantly trying to improve the accuracy. Also, how long before you started using it? That also affects accuracy.”

“I’ve been using it for at least a month. Actually I was the one who pitched this idea to Zeke. There’s a lot of potential for this type of application and the features in the psychiatric wards in hospitals.”

In Levi’s experience, one month was more than enough for the application to get used to its user. Levi observed her face, his frustrated mind had instinctively searched for disappointment in that confusion.

Of all the places the application could have malfunctioned, it had to be the one who had pitched the idea to the business mogul in the first place. More importantly, of all people, it had to be Hange Zoe who had witnessed it.

_It works well 90% of the time at least._ Hundreds of millions or even billions of data points wouldn’t be wrong much more frequently than that.

“It does have potential,” Levi agreed. If there was disappointment in her gaze or any intention to convince Zeke to pull out of the deal, he wanted to do at least his part to snuff it out. “What’s going on now with the application...It might just be a bug and it can easily get fixed.” Levi said.

“Do we contact support?” Hange asked.

“No need. Leave it to me.”

“But we should ask… I might have done something wrong on my end. Or maybe I wasn’t holding it right---”

“Hange, I developed the application. I would know.”

* * *

The band aid solution then was the the classic technical support answer to 90% of application and device problems.

“Can you try turning it on and off again?” Levi asked.

Hange was rich and she was married to one of the richest men in the country. Her phone was one of the best ones money can buy and with the time ticking down until they had to meet Erwin and Zeke in the office, Levi was grateful that the phone had great reaction time. The application worked more smoothly and seamlessly than Levi was used to.

In that span of an elevator ride, they had the time to restart it twice. The ‘in-love’ notification never left. And Levi had started to realize that he was the only one in a 10 meter radius who could have rung her alarm.

As they approached the wide door to Erwin’s office at the penthouse of the building, Levi decided to take some time to just try it one last time.

Before he turned off his own love alarm and before he prepared Hange’s phone for the demo. His only mistake was that he had done that final test right outside Erwin’s office.

“Ah, sweetheart, there you are!” Zeke’s voice rang out in the tense silence, supplemented so tackily by the click of the door knob and the creak of the door. “Come in! Hurry! We only have a few more minutes to try the app before we have to leave for our next appointment!”

Zeke hurriedly pulled Hange into the room, leaving little time for either of them to react.

“I downloaded the application just for this moment.” Zeke guided her to the sofa so gracefully it was as if any moment he would be breaking into dance. If he hadn’t plopped her down on the coach in front of him, Levi wouldn’t have been surprised if they did dance.

Zeke looked up at Levi then back to Erwin. “Okay, both of you. No bringing out your phones. The only two who will be using this are me and Hange. Let’s keep the experiment free of any other noise,” he said.

Zeke was like a tiger ready to pounce on prey as his eyes shifted between both Erwin who had brought out his phone to turn it off and share the black screen and Levi who had settled on the chair in front of him. The three waited while Hange turned on her phone again and turned on the application.

Levi had to note that her phone was faster than usual yet there in the room, when the tension was so thick it could have been cut with a knife, it was the slowest thing in the word. Levi had half the mind to send an anonymous angry complaint to the company for inventing such a slow phone.

The tension had him frozen. Zeke’s eyes although constantly moving between the three of them bore holes into Levi and the latter could only stare as Hange opened the application.

“Here it is!” She chirped. A little too ecstatic and a little too enthusiastic, far from what Levi had gotten used to on the way back. If Levi had enough sense in him to go back to the experience of a few minutes ago, alone with her, he probably would have thought her smile and her tone then to be something manufactured.

Levi’s thoughts though, although sidetracked for a few seconds or so, quickly flew back to Hange’s phone and next to it was Zeke’s phone.

The screen with the logos chimed in unison. The chime had Levi stiffening up a little more, unable to even manage a subtle movement like taking his eyes off the two screens in front of him.

Levi held some belief that overtime with enough information, machines could start thinking for themselves. He had become a little more convinced of that when the few times his testers had reported issues and tagged them as priority issues, they had magically fixed themselves the moment Levi bothered to take a look. As if the application prefers to listen to its one master. 

_Your father’s watching you. Come on_ **work _._** The application was Levi’s brainchild and at that moment, he was hoping the application would listen. That moment was decisive for many reasons. As Erwin had said before, they were important clients. And on top of that, did he want to disappoint Hange?

He just met her but somehow, the idea of having her disappointed had him clutching at his knee a little tighter, digging his nails into his kneecap.

“Ah… Something doesn’t seem right.” It was Zeke’s voice of all things that had dissolved the tension.

Levi soon realized he hadn’t even noticed the chime that came with the message ‘someone nearby is in love with you.' With the tension gone at least, Levi’s brain had more space to process what had happened in the brief moment.

“This is unexpected...” Erwin spoke up. “If you want, in our next meeting, I could show you that it works with me and Marie.”

In the midst of the confusion, Levi didn’t even notice his eyes had flown so instinctively to Erwin and Zeke’s brief exchange. He quickly looked back at the phones to find two hearts in one of them and one of them without even a single one.

Hange grabbed for the one with two hearts and showed it to Levi. “Is this normal?”

“That’s your phone right?”

“Yes…” Hange answered hesitantly. “Yes it is.”

“I just wanted to make sure,” Levi said as if that would have been enough to serve as a catch basin for what had been his most idiotic question the past hour, or maybe even the past year. _How do you not recognize her phone? You were looking through it just a few minutes ago._

“So… Hange’s phone has two hearts and Mr. Jaeger… your phone has none.” Levi recounted as he looked between the two of them.

“Maybe that extra heart got stuck there and didn’t get transmitted to my phone. Is there a firewall in your wifi?”

_It doesn’t work that way._ Levi thought to himself. He started to wonder if Zeke had been listening to him when he did the demo just an hour ago.

Zeke nodded. “I’d be hesitant to invest in the further development and to roll out an unreliable product if these bugs aren’t fixed as soon as possible.”

“Levi, could you please investigate this issue?” Erwin asked. “I’m sorry to have to assume like this, but this malfunction… it could be a _bug._ ” Erwin though had tiptoed into that last word, a little too carefully

Of course he would be careful. Most days, ‘bug’ wasn’t a term Levi would have liked to see so easily thrown around and Erwin was very much aware of that.

In fact, he had one house rule among the developers and the support team. The word ‘bug’ must only be used after enough testing has been done. After the application has been reset, the wifi has been checked, the device in question was reset and checked and any other non-application reason for an error has been explored.

Since a while ago though, he had been too careless with that word.

“It’s a bug,” Levi agreed. It could have been from the calm surrender after having used that word a little too many times or from the ironclad certainty that it was a bug. Somehow, Levi wasn’t too bothered at having clocked something to an error, a fatal glitch in the system right in front of one of the largest opportunities of the company sitting right in front of him. "I'll investigate this."

"We’ll tag it as a priority one ticket and we'll have our head engineer handle the investigation first hand,” Erwin said.

“Great!” Zeke clasped his hands together loudly, leaving a still unrecovered Levi almost jumping on his seat. “We can catch up again in two weeks Erwin. I’d be happy to see what developments you’ll have in store then.”

“I’ll escort you two out. The car is waiting for you by the main entrance right?”

There had been greetings before that. Levi was sure he felt a light tap or two as he sat on the chair staring straight ahead. He had enough mind space at least to guess that it had been Hange who had tapped on his shoulder.

_I didn’t even get to say goodbye._ In that quiet room, he felt a twinge of sadness and regret at not even taking them out to the door. He would have wanted to escort them out too. More specifically, he would have wanted to escort Hange out.

He opened his phone to see the love alarm had been active and that in the quick sequence of events, Levi had forgotten to turn it off. It was a quick and easy deduction to make. Erwin’s phone had been turned off so the one heart was definitely from Zeke’s phone. His own open love alarm could have easily been the reason behind the extra heart in Hange’s phone.

_But we just met._ Levi thought to himself. _So there must be a bug._

Yet the application had worked as expected. Two other love alarms had been active in that large office which covered more than the ten meter radius. The offices for testing and support were in another building, too far for Levi to even suspect that the heart could have been from another test.

Levi opened and closed the application a few more times. He was alone in the room and as expected, the blue screen was empty of any hearts.

_So the application really is working as expected._ Levi was a little disappointed to find out that it was working well. If the application had crashed, or the display warped even a bit, he could have clocked the issue to that and investigated that instead.

Levi’s mind raced as he went through the steps in his head, the most efficient way to find that bug.

_Bugs are most easily found when issues are reproduced through an exact process._

The hardest bugs to find and fix were the hidden ones, the ones that watched and waited until the user did too many things at once, at specific times, at specific circumstances. The bugs that appeared when the wifi cuts at the exact moment a user launches an app. The bugs that appeared when a love match is reported before someone steps out of the ten meter bubble a little too quickly.

Levi hated those bugs. Being the head engineer though, those were the ones that ended up escalating to him anyway. He looked back at meeting her by the garden and attempted to recall everything at once.

Was it a hot day? No it was mid spring and he wasn’t sweating.

Was he walking too fast? No? Maybe? He couldn’t remember.

Did he pass by a dead spot for wifi? No the outdoors don’t have deadspots for wifi or cellular data.

The questions took time to consider. His mind was attempting to recall every single detail of that meeting while at the same time attempting to churn up explanations. How long his mind was taking, he couldn't tell.

Eventually, as the sky on the window behind him turned a bright orange, Levi gave up and exited Erwin’s office.

If he was going to reproduce the issue, he was going to need some extra hands, more specifically those two extra hands that had been there with him, the one who had witnessed that issue first hand on her phone. His thoughts automatically flew to one Hange Zoe.

Her number was still saved on his phone. Levi texted her on the way back to his office, a short request to meet up at her convenience.

_She might be busy._ Levi thought. Still, it was worth the risk.

The sun started to set and Levi only quickened the pace to his own office. He hurriedly retrieved his bag and made his way to the exit and out to the train station a five minute walk away from the building. Even before he boarded the train, his phone vibrated with a notification from an unsaved number.

Hange’s number.

_When are YOU free?_

“Anytime.” Levi said to himself as he boarded the train and disappeared into the rush hour crowd, making a mental note to reply that as soon as he had the down time to.

The texts came and went very swiftly after that. Even before his own stop, a mere three stops away. He had the date. He had the time. And he had her confirmation.

As he exited the train station and broke away from the crowds, he took one last look at his phone, just to make sure he hadn't been dreaming what the last message was.

“See you tomorrow.” Levi read it aloud, firmly enough to have it burned into his head. “I’ll see you then, Hange.” He added to himself. He had no intention of sending that message though.

Instead, he made his way back to his little apartment, walking much faster than usual with a clear cut plan to shower and go straight to sleep. He had a long day waiting for him the next day and he wanted to make sure he was in his best shape for it.

**Author's Note:**

> Like all my other requested fics, I do have an idea about where I want this story to go. First things first, I'll finish A Tale of Two Slaves, then I'll decide which multichapter fic I wanna tackle. 
> 
> Feedback is very much appreciated!


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